Thread: Peyton Manning's Denver Broncos clearly Super Bowl favorites

I feel compelled to write this in advance of Denver's trip to New England for the 16th installment of Peyton Manning versus Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.

No matter what happens at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, the Denver Broncos are the best team in the NFL and should be considered the team to beat as we look toward Super Bowl XLIX.

Peyton Manning and these Broncos are akin to the Miami Heat during LeBron James' stay in South Beach. Fairly or unfairly, it's about getting to championships and winning titles. LeBron made the NBA Finals in each of his four years with the Heat, snagging a pair of rings. That's a success, even if the total didn't quite match the bevy of titles LeBron nonchalantly guaranteed in his introductory dance party. ("Not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven ...")

rest - http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300...bowl-favorites

It would be a safer pick AFTER Sundays game, but maybe that's the point. I said after the SF game that the team that FINALLY played a full 60:00 would convince me it was championship calibre if it could repeat that performance just 4 days later, and it did. It's hard for even the best teams to maintain that intensity and focus three straight games against good opponents, especially with 10 days off to get distracted and complacent before the last one. But if anything can keep our eyes on the prize, it's @NE, especially after the way they utterly dominated Chicago for 60:00 at home yesterday.

The one thing I still don't get is this recurring narrative:

Elway went back to the drawing board after the Super Bowl embarrassment. The Broncos' general manager set out in search of defensive additions this past offseason -- and he slammed it out of the park.

Okay, sure; Elway rightly realized the SB proved we still needed big improvements to be champions, and he responded by scoring another FA coup with multiple great defenders—but our DEFENSE didn't lose the SB; even with HALF our defensive starters out hurt, "our defense kept us in the game," and that's not my declartion: IT'S ELWAYS!

It seems like if we wanted to add what was missing in the team that showed it wasn't ready, we should've made the additions where they were needed, not on the side of the ball that was good enough even at half-strength to "keep us in the game" against a SB team. Maybe it's just because Seattles offense wasn't a powerhouse to start with (though they're 8.7 yds/pass attempt was better than EVERYONE—including our record-smashing passing.) Yet the group manhandled was our offensive line, not just LT, but RT and LG, too.

Shifting the beaten RT to LG and the beaten backup LT to RT won't fix that: They'll STILL be beaten, just in a new spot. Sorry for the tangent, but it's really the only weak link I can find on a team otherwise SOLID everywhere. I wish Irving were a little better, but he's not awful, and with 10 studs playing around him and good backups for him and them, it's not a huge worry. Manning's still Manning, we have a pair of Pro Bowl WRs and a Pro Bowl TE, and if Sanders isn't a fourth Pro Bowler the whole thing's a joke. The only missing pieces are between Clady and Vasquez.

I read the article. Hard.

We were the last two years too. Doesn't mean squat. This team seems more complete however.